In 1950, the United States of America's soccer team was responsible for one of the greatest upsets in the sport's history when they defeated that (rather self-appointed) giant of the game England, and now I'd like to extend the hand of Welsh sporting brotherhood to your rugby team.
Yes America - hold your minority sports heads up high once more because you nearly did it again at the Rugby World Cup which is currently flitting between France, Wales, and Scotland in one of those bizarre pieces of sporting politics that makes rugby such fun.
In fact, such was the gnashing of teeth, supping of hemlock, and foretelling of doom precipitated by the USA Eagles' opening fixture against reigning world champs England, it feels like the men in white lost, despite the 28 - 10 scoreline in their favour.
England captain Phil Vickery has subsequently been suspended for what looked like a pretty desperate, panic stricken trip on an Eagle and the English sporting press has launched into an orgy of catastrophe prediction ahead of the next fixture, a far tougher outing against the hugely physical and highly-fancied South Africans.
This is good news for me as a Wales fan - the phrase "As long as we beat the English" has even made it into a Stereophonics song — such is the dislike between the teams' supporters — and, it goes almost without saying that many of the rugby adoring Welsh public will be cheering on the Springboks against the old enemy.
It's important to remember just what a tiny country Wales is to realise what a world-class team means to the nation - it's a news cliché to refer to an "area the size of Wales" when reporting on denuded rainforests and the like.
It's unique in rugby (with apologies to the 1958 World Cup soccer team) that Wales can lay claim to that achievement, making the national game a matter of supreme controversy, and perhaps a little sadly these days emotion and nostalgia - I feel no shame when I can tell you dear Blogcritics readers that I shall be in tears at some point tomorrow: probably just after the national anthem.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - RJ
Rugby, rugby...rugby?
I haven't a clue. Is that the sport where you execute the dog that loses with an illegal handgun?
2 - Dr Dreadful
Now that Michael Vick's NFL career is over maybe he can reinvent himself as a scrum-half in the English Premiership.
3 - STM
Well, Colin, here I am sitting in Sydney, wondering how the fu.k a Rugby World Cup that's supposed to be in France has Wales playing a game against Australia at - wait for it - Cardiff Arms Park (or what's left of it after it became Millennium Stadium).
Hmm. Home game then. Land of our Fathers indeed.
More like How's yer father. However, I do agree with you ... the Yanks should play more rugby. They looked OK the other night against the Poms.
4 - Dr Dreadful
Stan, the Millenium is actually a brand spanking new stadium, built in a different location from the Arms Park which was still hosting major sporting events while the new one was under construction.
I imagine the old place has been bulldozed by now to make way for some new houses and a Tesco.
5 - Dr Dreadful
Actually I just double-checked my facts and my memory on the subject is apparently faulty. The Millennium Stadium is indeed on the same site as the Arms Park, but built on a different alignment.
Immediately after I posted that last comment, the seeds of doubt were sown when one part of my brain told another part, "Didn't Wales play their home internationals at Wembley while...?"
So I Googled it, and sure enough...
Oh well, we all make mistakes - as the hedgehog said climbing off the toilet brush.
6 - bliffle
I get Australian Rugby on the "Megahertz Worldview" network and it's very enjoyable. And those players are really trim!
7 - Colin Ricketts
Stan, it's weird isn't it? I think Wales and Scotland offered to vote for France to host the tournament in return for being allowed home games... I think Wales get a quarter final in Cardiff too. Ahhhh, the feuds, the trading!
The Old Arms Park (as in Cardiff's club ground) still exists (I walked past it yesterday) in the shadow of the magnificent Milenium Stadium, still close by the River Taff.
Wales didn't really get into the game against the Wallabies until the second half, and then just made too many mistakes - hey ho, the Southern Hemisphere really are a class apart this time around. Still what South Africa did to England (or England did to themselves) on Friday night was something of a compensation.
Thank you for the comments - I think I've done a pretty poor job of selling rugby so I may return to the subject at some point.
Iechyd da bob Cymru!
8 - STM
Colin: good stuff.
I'm not sure that northern and southern teams coming from different sides of the draw is great, though, especially for the southern hemisphere teams (perhaps we have to add Argentina to that list now after the touch-up they gave France). It always means that teams like Australia and New Zealand will likely end up playing each other in the semis.
I do believe the Super 14 is the key here. It's a very intense competition that pits the best of the three southern hemisphere nations against each other week after week in a club/franchise type arrangement, and gives them a lot of experience playing away games in very hostile environments. Nothing will put more steel and fire in the belly than playing against 15 lunatics who are being fired up by 50,000 baying Afrikaners at somewhere like Loftus Versfeld.
It also means there is a great player base to draw from for the national sides, although Australia still has a small base as rugby is still the third game after Australian Football(souther/western states) and rugby league (eastern states) - both games abominations, BTW :)
My tip: South Africa. They are awesome at the moment. The only NH side with half a chance is France, and even though they looked impressive against Ireland last night, I still don't think they have the fire power.
But you never know with the Frogs.
9 - STM
Doc, give yourself an upper cut for that one ...
10 - Colin Ricketts
I think the draw is always (or at least in my memory) skewed that way to provide a North V South final, which is unfair, as the two best teams are from the South... I don't like any kind of seeding in any draws to be honest - bring back random!
England have picked up a bit and played some decent rugby against Samoa in front of a cracking crowd in Nantes - fellow Celts the Bretons, my mother, a native Welsh speaker, was able to converse with Breton speakers with comparitively few difficulties on a childhood holiday there.
South Africa nearly lost to Tonga, but they were a second string side, which is a worry for the Boks if they suffer injuries or (No! Surely not) suspensions, citings and arrests.
Admitting that Wales haven't got a Schroedinger's cat's in hell chance of winning it, my next hope is of course that England don't.
I hope the All Blacks do it - they've been consistently in a different league for years, just never at the World Cup! And no-one wants the Aussies to win it again, do they Stan?
I've never seen any of the Super tourneys but have read it's very fast and skilfull rugby. Indeed London Wasps coach and former rugby league maestro Shaun Edwards has been writing that it's the refereeing in the English Guiness Premiership which has stymied British sides, who no longer compete at the break down - reversing the situation in 2003.
Most people over here reckoned Ireland had the best Northern Hemisphere chance this time but that don't seem the case any more and their 'golden generation' are looking a bit creaky now.
I'm glad to see Argentina doing so well, they, and Italy in the six nations, show that the game can expand globally.
I don't know if you remember it Stan, but one of my treasured sporting memories is of an annual game between Aussie Rules and Gaelic Football teams - once in either code - which had a brief run on terrestrial telly here when our Channel Four used to screen Gaelic and Aussie games - it was the most violent sporting spectacle I have ever seen... "It's a pass - it's a brawl!" Ad infinitum, lovely.
11 - STM
Lol. The "International Rules" series. Read: no fu.king rules at all. Australians love a bit of biff with their sport (which is probably why soccer has never really taken off in the Antipodes. So put them up against those other well-known lunatics, the Irish, in a game where you have carte-blanche to belt the sh.t out of your opponent and it's on for young and old. Mind you, your mob aren't backward in coming forward, either, are they. And Poms playing good rugby? Nah ... Samoa just played badly.
And in answer to your query, no, of course I would just hate to see Australia win a third world cup :)
12 - Colin Ricketts
Welsh players never cheat, surely that's a given. Gareth Thomas got those scars extreme gardening!
13 - Dr Dreadful
Australians love a bit of biff with their sport (which is probably why soccer has never really taken off in the Antipodes...)
Then you probably haven't been watching the Women's World Cup, specifically the USA-England game, which had elbows and studs flying everywhere. At least one broken nose on the English side and one ploughed scalp on the American.
England did amazingly well against the technically far superior USA team. Even from my distant expat perspective it was easy to see why their World Cup campaign has created such interest and excitement back home. It was so refreshing to see an English team actually unafraid to attack, and moving the ball up with pace and purpose instead of what the men seem to always do, which is pass it around aimlessly as if they're expecting the opposition to just politely get out of the way. Unfortunately, the girls do seem to have inherited their male counterparts' lack of bite in the penalty area ("But... if I hit it... I might score! And then what would happen?!").
Still, for 45 minutes they actually looked better than the Americans - quite impressive for a team that plays for peanuts. They did the country proud and I hope their World Cup showing will encourage the FA to put a lot more money into the women's game, because they certainly can compete against the best - they now need to start beating them.
14 - Dr Dreadful
Portugal were a bit unlucky today, it seems. That free coaching Stan gave them when he was over there seems to have paid off a bit! ;-)
15 - Dr Dreadful
Women's World Cup update... Just watched the USA-Brazil quarter-final on DVR. Most amazing thing I've seen in a long time.
Brazil not only beat the US, they absolutely destroyed them. No small thanks to their striker Marta, who is the most gifted player, male or female, I've watched in recent years. She scored two goals and spent most of the evening ghosting past some of the world's best defenders as if they weren't there. She makes Ronaldinho look like my mate Andrew playing indoor soccer after an evening in the pub.
Granted, America had a player sent off who emphatically shouldn't have been, and their coach made the extremely questionable decision to switch out goalkeepers before the biggest match of the tournament, but that doesn't take away from Brazil's performance. And this against the best team in the world on a 52-game unbeaten run. Fantastic stuff. I'm really looking forward to the final against Germany.
...Well, nothing much seems to be happening in the Rugby World Cup...
16 - STM
Semi, Doc, not quarter, give yourself another upper cut :)
The result also goes to show just how good Australia is, having lost 3-2 in the final minutes on the QUARTER final :)
17 - STM
Australia having lost 3-2 to Brazil, that is - who are tipped to win the tournament.
And now, Doc, it will soon be time for some quarter-finals action in the Rugby World Cup.
Australia now almost certain to meet Poms, with revenge in mind for Cup final defeat that denied us a THIRD world cup four years agao coufrtesy of J.Wilkinson's last-minute fucking field goal.
USA vs Samoa the other night was pretty damn good, US lost, but it was a great game. Very willing, if that's the world to use, as you might expect with the Pacific islanders.
18 - Dr Dreadful
D'oh! You're right, Stan, it was the semi.
My brain must be melted from trying to follow the Rugby WC, which appears, after about eight months of occasional games roughly in the same hemisphere as France, which is allegedly the host country, to have progressed as far as the opening stages of the extra-preliminary pre-qualifying round...
I almost hope we lose to Tonga, if only to avoid the inevitable national embarrassment of conceding a hundred million points to a team of determined Aussies out for revenge. It promises to be as gruesome as the cricket was a few months ago.
Back to the women: the Matildas did do great as well, although I didn't record that game so am relying on the BBC website and the ESPN commentators referring back to the match. Sounded like a good game and unlucky on Oz... a bit like 2005, eh? ;-)
19 - Dr Dreadful
2003, I meant. Bugger.
20 - Silver Surfer
Yep, another upper cut there Doc old boy.
On a serious note (honest), the real reason for the pool rounds dragging out is that rugby players get really physically smashed around; the recovery time is a fair bit longer than most non-contact sports. They can't play on a Sunday then have another go round on the wednedsay night to speed up the process - it's too bloody hard on the body.
Ice baths (Ooh, geez, just the mention of that makes me go brass monkeys) can only do so much before the body starts to arc up from the continual battering.
21 - Dr Dreadful
Then maybe they should have gone with five pools of four teams instead of four pools of five, with the second-placed team with the worst record not qualifying for the quarters.
What was the thinking behind the format they're using? Give the minnows a guaranteed number of games and New Zealand some scoring practice?
22 - Silver Surfer
Pretty much. I think the idea is to showcase the game in the countries where it's not strong (like England :)
23 - Dr Dreadful
Well, I guess it's game on, Stan. We managed to find a way round the human volcanoes of Tonga and will face the Wallabies in the quarters sometime around the year 2250. ;-)
24 - STM
Mate, I have to stay that England are very one-dimensional. They are good at the set-piece, as always, and will try to punch the ball up with their forwards through their pick-and-drive game, but in the backs, only Wilkinson at five-eighth (fly half up your way) has anything big to offer. He is at least trying to spark up a mediocre backline.
And given the amount of time he's been off the park, that he has been able to give England some new impetus these past few games shows what a class act he really is.
Australia will be worried nevertheless, especially with his inclusion, and even more so because the Tongans have actually taken to playing rugby, rather than just belting people - which means the ice baths will have England fit and ready for the men in gold.
I might be on a pension though by the time we get around to it.
But it won't be a walk-up start for the Wallabies.
25 - Dr Dreadful
Australia 10, England 12...
Stan, I don't know if you'll get to read this but I do know that we Poms* just completely buggered up your holiday.
I guess you were right about it not being a walkover for the Wallabies (or should that be a hopover?).
Specifically, a certain Mr Wilkinson.